From my first
visit to a black and white darkroom I have been fascinated by the
making of images without using a conventional camera. One cameraless
image is called a photogram. Conventional photograms are made by
placing objects onto light sensitive material, either paper or film,
and exposing them to light. A negative image of the object is formed
on the light sensitive material. Dense objects are usually shown in
silhouette and translucent and transparent objects provide varying
degrees of detail. The image "Feather" in this exhibit is a
contact print of a conventional photogram of a feather.

The images in
this exhibit involve a twist on the basic concept of the photogram. I
placed very small "found" natural obects in glass
slide mounts. (With the exception of the mosquitos, no insects
were sacrificed to make these images. Perfectly good bug parts can be
found in the summer under your automobile's windshield wiper blades
or lying around the yard.) The glass slides were then placed into the
enlarger in the same area where film negatives are usually placed.
The image was focused as well as could be depending upon the varying
degrees of thickness of the material. Negative images on RC photo
paper were made of the materials in exactly the same manner as
conventional black and white prints. The negative images were then
used to make masked contact print positives onto a warm-tone
fiberbase paper. These final images were then hand tinted using oil
based pencils.

Being an
artist who came to love making art after exploring a fascination with
science this process was extremely satisfying. Enlarging the natural
materials was like looking at them through a microscope.

The Images:
(left to right)

Wings

Wings 2

Pink Honeysuckle

Yellow Honeysuckle

Japanese Maple

Maple Seed Pods

Moth Wings

Maidenhair Fern

Feather

Mosquitos
"The Party's Over"

The prints are
archivally processed using warm tone fiber base silver gelatin photo
paper. Even though subsequent prints can be made using the paper
negative, each print is unique as it is hand tinted. The archival
matting has an outside dimension of 16 x 20 inches which is a
standard frame size and images sizes are approx. 8" x 8".